The Palestinian accused of stabbing a 56-year-old police officer at Sandholm asylum centre previously attacked a Swedish government minister.

According to a statement from the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET), the stateless 25-year-old responsible for the attack at Sandholm asylum centre in the early hours of Tuesday morning was already known to security services. PET said they were aware of his psychological state and possible history of violence.

The statement read:

PET received information from other Danish authorities that the suspect could possibly be mentally unstable, wishing to travel to Syria or Iraq, that he could possibly be radicalised and sympathise with [Islamic Sate] and that he had indicated that he previously attacked a Swedish minister in Sweden.

The PET statement did not name the minister, but the agency said Swedish authorities confirmed the Sandholm asylum centre suspect was the same assailant.

The Swedish incident was an attack on the country’s Minister for Justice and Migration, Morgan Johansson. The Localreports that in March this year he was leaving a housing project for refugees on the former site of Broby Hospital when he was sprayed with a fire extinguisher.

Johansson told local news network P4 Kristianstad that although he had not been injured “you shouldn’t treat these things too lightly either. You can’t just say ‘move on’, because of course it’s serious.”

The PET statement also confirmed the suspect was charged in a previous case concerning “threats against a police officer.”

As Breitbart London has reported, the suspect was arrested at the end of a manhunt around the former military barracks of Centre Sandholm (pictured above) – Denmark’s largest asylum seeker accommodation housing around 600 people.

Since July he had been housed in Udrejsecenter Sjælsmark, a centre for rejected asylum seekers near to Copenhagen and a few kilometres from Sandholm asylum centre. He had been due to be sent away from Denmark having had his asylum claim rejected.